In Clarke's 1953 novel, a vast city drifts in a long sleep. Its
inhabitants are captives under the
city’s vast dome. Outside is a land largely unknown. But the citizens are not bored,
because they can have dreams so real that they are not dreams at all, but
virtually real.

Virtual reality. Nearly 40 years after
Clarke's novel, these are the buzzwords
for a new branch of computer
science. In VR theory, a human being would be hooked up to computer-generated
sensations. His eyes would see what the computer dictated. His ears would hear, his nose would
smell, his skin would feel what was programmed by the computer. It would seem he was actually having the experience provided by the software.

Virtual reality is still more theory than
practice, but for a movie critic, it holds out fascinating possibilities. What
is a movie, after all, but a crude form of VR, in which we see and hear what the filmmaker desires? Anyone who has ever laughed or cried
at the movies has
experienced a form of VR.

Already, some movies are more realistic than that. There's
IMAX, the high-tech
movie system that uses surround speakers and a five-story-high screen to put us
inside experiences like a Rolling Stones concert. There's that Star Wars ride
at Disney World, where we're strapped into seats that lurch forward and pitch
violently, while the large-screen
movie tries to convince us we're in a spaceship. What about 3-D? And such crude
1950s experiments as Smell-o-Vision (odors wafted into the theater) and Shock-a-Rama
(electric shocks in some of the seats)?

What would happen if, someday, going to the movies was like this:

You walk up to the Compu-Matic
Theater and buy your ticket to the latest
"Vrovie." Fifty bucks, but what the hell. Inside, there's no popcorn counter. Instead, you
sign an affidavit saying you have taken no solid nourishment since midnight.
They don't want you getting nauseated and choking on your vomit.

You go into an examination room, where nurse/ushers take your
pulse and a brief medical history. Then into the neural network engineering room, where electrodes are
strapped to your scalp. Earphones are provided. A helmet slips over your head,
and at first, you see pitch blackness. Then the Vrovie starts, and Julia Roberts or Alec Baldwin is
smiling at you (depending on which show you're attending).

You seem to be a character in their lives. You feel your feet
walking, your hands swinging. Tiny electrical impulses stimulate the sensual receptor
centers of your brain,
so that you smell freshly cut lawns on the summer breeze. You hear the wind in the trees.
You get into a car. Julia/Alec is driving. You're slammed back against the seat by the sudden acceleration. You
realize someone is chasing you. A slug slams into the window beside you, and glass flies against your cheek.
You feel the cut.
Blood runs down onto your hands, but Julia/Alec shouts, "It's only a flesh
wound. Hang on!" And then the rocket
car lifts off and zooms into the stratosphere,
where your driver parks it in orbit, turns to you, smiles seductively, and
says, "The moon really
looks pretty from here. . . . "

These kinds of escapist
experiences will be available, I understand, within a generation. Crude
forms of them are
available now. Virtual reality is an academic specialty,
but movies like "Tron" and "The Lawnmower Man" are introducing the concept to mass audiences.

The questions about VR fall
into two categories: technical and ethical. The technical questions will take care of themselves; this technology
will be perfected. But the ethical
questions are extremely interesting. They include:

To what degree is it permissible to completely take over another
person's consciousness? Is there a limit to how deeply one person should
manipulate another's experience? Is it right for us to have VR experiences
before we have actual experiences to base them on? What would it mean if we had
our first sexual experience in VR before we had it in real life?

If we really and truly felt we were dying in VR, how would that
affect our subsequent life, after we "awakened"? If we were completely
convinced of impending
death, could a real "near death" experience be triggered? Would all
our loved ones beckon us to enter that famous tunnel of light, only to discover it was a
false alarm?

And what would it be like for the stars? There'd be millions of people walking around who, thanks to Vrovies, shared the literal impression of having made love with them,
killed them, been killed by them, spent time with them? If a fan said, "I
loved you in your last Vrovie," what would the correct answer be?

Movie critics, faced with Vrovies, would become even greater
bores than we already are. We wouldn't be reviewing movies, we'd be telling you
about our last trip. A review might open like this:

Julia Roberts smiled invitingly as her arm snaked toward me across the seat of the rocket car.The new
moon twinkled above us. I felt a stirring in my libido, as . . .

How would critics - or anyone - criticize such an
experience? Reality is
above criticism, isn't it? Would we leave a Vrovie feeling, not that the experience was bad, but that
it shouldn't have happened to us? If Clint Eastwood had shot us, would we still
be angry at him? If we'd had sex with the star of the Vrovie, how would our spouses
feel? Would that count as cheating? And what would it be like, as a Vrovie
star, to perform in two takes of every
scene - the first one
forthe camera, the second one for the electrodes recording the feel of the your body?

These are questions I'll have to leave to future generations.
But I can think of some
Vrovies I'd like to experience. I'm afraid of heights, so I'd like to climb a mountain in a Vrovie. I'd
like to be inside "The Third Man." I'd like to be Groucho Marx. And when Anita Ekberg goes wading in
that ancient fountain in the Roman
dawn, to hell with Marcello Mastroianni, that's me, splashing right in there
after her.

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